Sunday, December 20, 2009

First off, thanks to all our loyal customers for years of patronage. CardShark is in its ninth year, and its success is directly related to loyal users like you!
We often get requests for new features and small improvements to the site which we take very seriously but are frequently slow to move on. For this we apologize. One of the big problems is that our website was built in 2000 and the foundation is starting to show signs of age. You know that person on your block that never mows their lawn, never puts a fresh coat of paint on their house or never gets their sidewalk repaired? Well, we don't want to be that neighbor. We know our pages aren't all pretty CSS, we still use the occasional font tag, and the usability of the site leaves much to be desired.

Very shortly we will be introducing CardShark version 3.0 to address these issues and more. This upgrade will make it much easier in the future to build new tools for the site and APIs so our users can interact with the site exciting new ways. It will help us make bug fixes and add small user requested features quite easily. We will also be using this change to upgrade to new and improved servers for more capacity and speed. Most importantly the new site provides us with a foundation to expand.

The new site has been recoded with an eye towards better design and usability. Improvements include paging, sorting and better searching of all tables. The new code base is object-oriented and has a slick new CSS design. Our card detail pages now roll up similar items and let you select them in quantity, making it much easier to purchase multiple cards. We have thrown in a little ajax to make the site more fluid, and it is built for better performance and security.
We are adding some new features. A seller profile page and store front that will give sellers an opportunity to do some self promotion. We are also attempting to simplify our shipping charges. In addition, there will be a slight increase in these fees to keep up with the recent postal increases. There will also be an option for buyers to purchase delivery confirmation.

With any major change, there will be a few hiccups. New passwords will be required for enhanced security. We will be getting much tougher about member policies. Everyone will need to have a valid working email to use the site. The card notes field will have to be directly related to an item; promotional messages will no longer be allowed. Finally, we will institute a new policy that will put your inventory on vacation if you haven't logged in for a while. If you haven't made a sale in a year, your inventory will be deleted. Sellers will receive notifications via email if any of these things are going to happen so don't worry. Everyone should keep an eye on this blog for more specific details and notifications of future policy changes.

We know this update has been a long time coming, and we thank all of you for your patience. Our next goal is to get a working version of the site up for beta testing. We are about 95% done with the programming and will be extending a BETA invitation to some of our top users shortly. If you would like to participate, please let us know as well.

From all of us at Cardshark.com we wish you a Happy Holidays and look forward to launching the new site to you in early 2010.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

You might ask, "Why another blog?, Isn't there enough out there already?" Valid questions for sure. We often talk with many of our users one-on-one and the same questions or comments come up frequently. There are also various tips and techniques we have come up with over the years to make using http://www.cardshark.com/ a lot easier and more enjoyable. Additionally, there is a bit of a gap between our behind the scenes development of the site and our policies and a formal way to present this information to you the user so you can stay informed or even help contribute to the direction of the site.

Our aim with this blog is to bring some of this content to you. Here's a few things we have planned to talk about in the near future.

Tips and techniques

Frequent customer support questions and resolutions

Major site upgrades

Policy clarification, proposed changes and an open forum for user comments

User chosen topics.

New features and site news

Feel free to write to us with any questions you have about the direction of CardShark, behind the scenes questions or just general ideas you would like to see us pontificate on. Also don't forget to subscribe to our feed to keep up to date with new posts. We will probably only post 1-2 times a month although there may be a bit more early on.